Zürich – The Blogette of Dr. D

At about 1,200 feet elevation, Zürich is lower than yesterday’s 6,762-foot-high Kleine Scheidegg pass. As a result, Zürich gets some snow that covers roofs and grass, but the streets usually stay clear in the winter. We learned that Switzerland has no raw materials except salt, so everything else must be imported. Salt is available because the land was once covered by sea water. Switzerland has a very high standard of living. It is a world financial center, and most people rent their housing from a bank or from an insurance company, spending about half of their salaries on rent. It is very expensive to live in Switzerland, but salaries are high and unemployment is under three percent. Example: The Swiss franc is nearly equal in value to the U.S. dollar. Ted and I bought two beers and a hamburger to share for 49CHf (Swiss francs).

As a book lover, I endorsed our Zürich hotel lobby. This book display has a third leg that doesn’t show in the picture.

Here’s a chandelier for book lovers in the hotel restaurant.

We took a cruise on the city’s namesake lake and learned that Zürichers love water. Lake Zürich is 25 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 450 feet deep. It doesn’t freeze, and its shoreline must be shallow because it’s usually about 77 degrees in the summer–warm enough for lots of swimming. The west coast of the lake is called the “cold coast”; the east coast is called the “gold coast.” These are not economic distinctions. The gold coast receives more warm (golden) sunshine, while the cold coast falls in the shade of the mountains.

The water in Lake Zürich is very clean. Workers in Zürich often spend their lunch time at the lake, swimming or just relaxing. There are a number of swim events in the city each year. For the December Santa Claus swim, people swim across the much narrower Limmat River in Santa Claus caps. The summer swim across the lake attracted approximately 7,000 people this year. Sometimes, people swim across the lake just because it’s there. They wear yellow swim caps so they can be seen (and not hit) by boaters. No jet skis are allowed on the lake–only small motorboats and rowboats.

Dylan would love this gold coast swim raft. It reminds me of the rafts he makes in our pool by connecting our air mattresses, noodles, etc. The man on the pier and the boy in the water are scale figures that show the size of the raft. There’s another person sitting atop the yellow triangle of the raft.

The red umbrellas are on the deck of a “ladies only” spa on the Limmat River in Zürich. No men are allowed until after 7:00 p.m. There are similar men’s spas in the city. This is late morning and the club is crowded with ladies having a drink and sunbathing.

Our tour guide told us that taxis are so expensive and buses are so easy to use and so inexpensive, that no one takes a taxi in Zürich unless they are drunk. In fact, if someone takes a taxi, friends ask, “Were you drunk?” (We saw some people at our hotel getting into a taxi. Since they didn’t appear to be drunk, we assumed they were naive tourists.)

After our guided cruise and walking tour, Ted and I did some more walking on our own. We took a bus from our hotel to Zürich’s Old Town, the city’s core that was once enclosed by walls.

Zürich’s St. Peter’s Church boasts the largest church clock face in Europe. It is so large that the minute hand moves 1.5 meters when it advances and you can easily see the movement if you watch it.

There are a lot of bicycles in Zürich (left), but not nearly as many as in Amsterdam (right).

Fountains with water bottle spouts are everywhere. The water tastes wonderful! I like the style of this fountain.

Would you have guessed that the rounded holes at sidewalk level are for scraping the mud off your shoes before entering the store?

Ted and I walked through a pretty park that overlooked the river and the city.

Some men were playing giant chess in the park.

We found lots of good food while we were walking around the city.